


How Do You Love Someone?

by DemonAngelSakina



Series: Grand Designs: One-Shots [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Hurt with no Comfort, Past Relationship(s), Post Break-up, Songfic, alchemist, i need to not torture this character so much, metal instability, references to familial abuse, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 05:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15212645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonAngelSakina/pseuds/DemonAngelSakina
Summary: How do you love someone and make it last?!How do you love someone... (Love someone...) ...without tripping on the past?!





	How Do You Love Someone?

**Author's Note:**

> Okay...as crazy as it sounds--especially with my 'not fond of pop' music choices...Ashley Tisdale's "How Do You Love Someone" just makes me think of my vampire character, Dante.  
> (Said OC might consider it an insult to her rock/metal cred...but, eh.)
> 
> Thus...after listening to the song, I was inspired to write this little piece.

The silver-haired woman leaned over the table--tanned hands gripping tightly into her shaggy, shoulder-length mane; why did this have to happen? Why did it always happen?! Why did everything always have to go so wrong?! 

Cat-like green eyes opened, peering down at the heavy mahogany table as her mind raced--desperately searching for some kind of reason...some logic...just...searching for anything that could explain why she could not keep her relationships--romantic, and more often than not, platonic--stable.

Her eyes widened--her mother...her mother was so cold. Her mother...her mother never showed any form of love--at least not to her...or anyone in the family for that matter. It was...it had been an arranged marriage--her parents were...what were they? What was their relation--was it third cousins? Fourth? 

She closed her eyes, trying to remember--she hadn't thought of any of them for so long...and finally gave up, choosing to focus on her mother for now. Best for her to focus on what she could remember rather than torment herself with things that had long-since been lost to time--such acts would only drive her mad...if she were not there already.

The woman had never showed anyone love--colder than ice. She...had never taught her own daughter how to touch with love and gentleness and...she never...if anything, that wretch was an example of what NOT to do--of what NOT to be. Her mother couldn't handle a damn thing...and, in the end, she had run...run to another fucking world and started a new family; she had abandoned and forgotten her own daughter as if...as if she never had one. 

But it was not solely on her mother...no; her father shared some of the fault, the silver-maned woman decided as she dropped her hands from her hair--resting them on the table. Her father was just as cold--unfeeling as a stone and cruel as the demons of Hell. The only thing that man had ever taught her was how to hurt--he was not protector...a teacher. The only thing that made him her 'father' was that she owed half of her blood to him...and she damned the gods every chance she had for allowing even that debt.

But...was it just on them? The whole family could share the blame--all of them...every last damned one of them!! 

The woman gripped her fingers into her hair--a hip resting back on the heavy table as her head bowed, eyes clenched shut to keep the long unshed tears from trying to break free; sharp, dagger-like teeth were visible as she tried to steady the shallow breaths passing her bronze-painted lips.

_I've walked around broken..._  
_Emotionally frozen._

For so long...she had been like this--broken...denied something so very basic, yet so desperately needed. She had always struggled to figure out why--was something in her was so...utterly damaged that she was missing some vital component needed to love and be loved in return?

Was she...as frozen as her mother?  
As unfeeling and cruel as her father? 

Kohl-lined eyes widened in horror at the thoughts--what...what if she was exactly like them and that was why she couldn't make her relationships work?

_How do you love someone without getting hurt?_  
_How do you love someone without crawling in the dirt?!_

She dropped her hands and pushed away from the table--her shoulders shaking in pure terror. That...by the gods...that couldn't be it, could it? The very thought made her blood turn to ice in her veins.

She paced the stone floor--the sharp staccato rhythm of her bootsteps out of sync with the slow grind of the gears overhead, but perfectly in tune with the violent pounding of her heart. Her hands raised and gripped tightly to her arms--if...if you'd never been taught how to love...how the hell could you? 

How could you possibly hope to love anyone and not end up face-down in the dirt?!

_How do you love--how do you love someone?!_  
_How do you love--how do you love someone?_

She dropped to her knees in the center of the floor--tears beginning to fall from her eyes, pale crystal staining the richly tanned skin. She practically doubled-over--the ivory-hued linen of her peasant-style shirt pulling tight over her back, the edges of the burned letters on her back just barely visible above the line of the cloth. 

She was supposed to have been their "golden child"...yet...when she would not walk their path, they threw her away as if she were trash. They abandoned her to the streets to die. She should have died...she was supposed to--surrounded by enemies and starved to the point she was feeding from common rats like an animal. 

A half-mad laugh escaped her lips at that--she could not love...but she could survive. That was all that she had been doing since the day she was born--she always survived!

But...at what cost?

_I've walked around hoping..._  
_Just barely coping._

Her half-mad laughter broke into a sob as she collapsed onto her side on the aged, wooden floor--trying to breath without choking.

So what if she could survive? What good was surviving...when you were completely alone?  
What good was just coping and muddling through when you had no reason to?  
What was the point in fighting with all of your strength...when you had nothing worth fighting for?

_It's hard to talk--to see what's deep inside._  
_It's hard to tell the truth...when you've always lied!_

Her body stilled, half-lidded eyes gazing weakly around the candle-lit chamber.

She kept everything hidden deep inside--painting herself as what everyone wanted to see, while everything true about herself was almost-obsessively hidden behind dozens of layers of masks...webs of lies and half-truths woven as thickly as silk screens. She had become a master of misdirection all for the sole purpose of protecting herself...and now...now it was costing her too much.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the gears overhead--her hair fanning out under her head like a broken halo.

 _How do you love someone and make it last?!_  
_How do you love someone... (Love someone...) ...without tripping on the past?!_

Never learning how to love--being starved of it for all her life...  
Being unable to completely move beyond her own past--being unable to forget, for even a second, the scars branded on her...  
Her need to protect herself and shut out anyone before they could get too close to her--before they could begin to chisel their way passed her defenses...

_How do you love--how do you love someone?!_  
_How do you love--how do you love someone?_

Her family may have laid the groundwork...but she had built her own prison.

Her eyes shut as tears flowed freely--the slow turn of the gears drowning out her broken sobs.


End file.
